Kill Me Tomorrow

by Richard S. Prather

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  Kill Me Tomorrow

  A Shell Scott Mystery

  Richard S. Prather

  FOR TINA

  who helped more than she knows.

  CHAPTER ONE

  She was a full-lipped and -hipped Italian tomato with Rome burning in her eyes.

  Tall, with long firm shapely legs, a waist hourglassed by a swinging Mother Nature, and an improbably extravagant bosom carried with the flirtatious yoo-hoo that glazes male eyeballs and ripens fruit in the trees, she had the look of Carnival in Rio, or Mardi Gras in New Orleans, or bullfights in Spain, or Saturday night in my apartment.

  My apartment was a long way from here—here being the cool, quiet cocktail lounge of Del Webb’s luxurious Mountain Shadows resort hotel, nestled between Mummy and Camel-back Mountains in Paradise Valley, lush oasis on the edge of Scottsdale, Arizona, in the Valley of the Sun.

  My apartment is a bachelor’s Hollywood pad in the Spartan Apartment Hotel—on North Rossmore, a couple of near-wrecks on the Freeway from my downtown L.A. office, Sheldon Scott, Investigations—but I was taking a week’s vacation from the Los Angeles smog and rumble and clatter, a hiatus from the hoods and heavies and grifters with whom I normally rub elbows or bump heads. I was here to soak in the pools and sweat in the heat, to laze and loll, to booze a little and unwind a lot. So, for the last hour, or since three P.M. of this steaming Friday in July, I had been sitting at the bar doing part of what I was here for.

  I’d yacked with the two bartenders, peeked at a couple of Eddie’s enchanting pictures and informed him that he was under citizen’s arrest, and listened to several of Fernando’s unbelievably atrocious jokes at which he—he alone—laughed uproariously, and I had jollied the three bouncy and good-looking waitresses, Harriette and Vera and Lou.

  But now I sat with my fingers touching the moist glass holding my half-finished bourbon-and-water and wondered what Lucrezia Brizante was doing in Scottsdale, Arizona.

  That was her name: Lucrezia Brizante.

  I didn’t hear her come in. Maybe I felt her. Or sensed the heat she seemed to bring in with her from the sun-burned desert outside. I wasn’t the only one.

  It was suddenly quiet in the bar. There had been the murmur of conversation, clink of ice on chilled glass, ripples of soft laughter, and then suddenly it was still.

  I knew who she was. Who didn’t?

  Dressed entirely in white, from high-heeled pumps, to high-on-thigh minifrock with low-on-loveliness neckline, to ridiculous puff of feathery hat on her hell-black hair, she lit up the room. She lit more than that. Standing motionless inside the doorway gazing at the men and women seated at tables behind me, she was a white-sex explosion, a fragment of Neronian orgy or solo Saturnalia momentarily held still and hugged by time.

  Then her glance fell on my face like the brush of a soft, warm wing. Her lips curved slightly, as if remembering a smile. And then she walked across the room toward me. Straight toward me.

  Well, maybe not straight, exactly.

  She moved in a direct line, true; but that movement in space was merely the invisible axis for a whole Ferris wheel of feminine goodies—Ferris wheel, hell, it was an entire circus of sensuous ripples and shimmers and tremblings—that notorious thrust of breast and swoop of waist and flare of hip so emphatic she appeared to be shaped in several more than three dimensions, obviously crammed with all the familiar female hormones plus aphrodisiac juices previously unknown.

  This was the first time I’d seen her in person, rather than brightening a magazine cover or in photos or on film, and for a moment I thought that a woman who looked so unbelievably good must be half real and half mirage, like those heat-wave oases that shimmer in hot sands. But I thought that only for a moment; because by then Lucrezia Brizante was halfway across the room and still coming toward me.

  Me? I thought. Why should the glory of the entire Italian peninsula want to see Shell Scott, private eye? Maybe it’s a horrible mistake; maybe she thinks I’m Grandpa Willie.

  Don’t get me wrong. You will never see me on television, advertising toothpaste which—in ways mystifying to all mankind—smacks gooey kisses upon male chops; even so, I do not look at all like Grandpa. The thought had occurred to me simply because, on rare occasions, strangers glimpsing me from a distance have gotten the impression I might be an octogenarian, or at least more ancient than the lively lad of thirty years which I am, since my hair, which sticks straight up into the air for half an inch or as much as an inch when I let it grow to pot, is as white as bleached bone-slivers—this once leading an unbelievably dumb broad to comment that my skull appeared to be unraveling—as are the up-slanting and bent-down-at-the-ends brows over my gray eyes.

  But it is my eyes, not my hairs, that are gray; and since I am a six-foot-two ex-Marine with a broken nose and other visible and invisible testimonies to public and private wars, and weigh two hundred and six solid pounds, and am tanned approximately the shade of a ripe banana, that impression had not yet persisted in a viewer’s mind when he, or she, lamped me from less than ten feet away.

  And Lucrezia Brizante was now only a foot and a half from me. Then I was standing, looking down at her, and she was at least a foot closer. And you can bet she knew I wasn’t Grandpa Willie.

  “Mr. Scott?” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m Shell Scott.”

  “How do you do?”

  She extended her hand, and I shook it gingerly, and even with that very casual touch she turned my thumb and four fingers into five little erogenous zones. A mere half-dozen words she’d said to me, but in them were the Thousand Nights and a Night in the Garden of Kam—that perfumed garden of sensual delights where the flesh burns forever with shameless desire—because they were breathed in a voice a man hears in his inner ear, if he dreams of houris and wantons and bawds.

  “I’m so glad I found you here, Mr. Scott”—sweet, scented breath warmed that inner ear, and before the inner eye nubile maidens undulated, busily flinging off diaphanous veils—“I need your help.”

  “Lady,” I said, “you’ve got it.” And I meant it both ways.

  She smiled like a woman getting chewed on the neck by Pan. It was a nice smile. I liked it. It went in my eyes and reamed out my arteries and steamed my blood and opened up half a dozen glands like cooked lotus blossoms.

  “But you don’t even know what I want you to do, Mr. Scott. It might be dangerous—”

  “Dangerous?” I laughed lightly. “Miss Brizante, you speak of danger—to me? Why, I am the man who parachuted alone into Red China armed only with poisoned chopsticks—which were made in Japan, at that. I am the man who fed peanuts to King Kong. Who twice addressed the Legion of Decency in his shorts—”

  “Really?” Her lips curved slightly.

  “Well, not really. I was just trying to impress you.”

  She looked up at me. “You are rather impressive, in an … unusual way. The word Harry used was ‘batty.’”

  “Harry? Batty?”

  “Shall we find a booth where we can talk, Mr. Scott? I would like to tell you about it.” She was glancing around. “How about over there?” With a nod she indicated a booth near which no other customers sat, a spot where we’d be assured of some privacy. Not much. I said, “Splendid,” anyhow, and steered her past a couple of tables and into the booth. I’d brought my half-full bourbon-and-water from the bar, so I asked Lucrezia if she’d like a drink.

  “Yes, I would, Mr. Scott.”

  “Shell?”

  She dropped her gaze to my mouth, then returned it like a gift to my eyes. “I’d like somethin
g cool and frosty.… Make it a Margarita, Shell.”

  I caught Vera’s glance—stare, it was, really—and she took the order, looking long at Lucrezia, briefly at me, and then apparently at something invisible which gave her a stomach ache. While waiting for the drink I took a long look at Lucrezia myself. If she’d been heat in the doorway, she was fire and brimstone this close in the booth. Her skin looked softer than the fuzz on baby chicks, the lips were provocatively pouting and pagan, and those black-velvet eyes could have burned holes in wet blankets.

  “Well,” I said, “here we are. I don’t know anything about the case yet, of course. But let’s be optimistic and suppose we get it all settled nicely in a day or two, or less. If so, how about dinner some night—soon—Miss Brizante? Lucrezia?”

  The question caught her off guard. “No,” she said.

  “No?”

  “Harry said you’d be like this. I’ll have to insist that we remain … businesslike, Mr.—Shell. I really do need your help. I think.”

  There was Harry again. “Harry who?”

  “Feldspen.”

  Ah, I thought. That Harry. Harry J. Feldspen was a longtime friend and sometime client, a man small in stature but very big, in Hollywood terms supercolossal, in moviebiz.

  He was head of Magna Studios, producers in the last two years not only of Sins of Sheba—advertised almost entirely by life-sized photos of abundantly endowed Sarrah Starr wearing what appeared to be a fig leaf left behind by the locusts—which had grossed forty-seven million dollars worldwide, but also of the Oscar-winning Wagner, which despite the presence in it of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Boston Pops and three hundred flautists playing golden flauts grossed under six million.

  Since Harry Feldspen, though himself a classical-music buff and enamored of critical acclaim, was also a man wise in the ways of the millions, and since he had lost five hundred thou on his earlier Beethoven, he did not now plan to produce Respighi, or even Mozart, not as long as he lived.

  He was, instead, on the verge of filming his latest epic, which might possibly gross a million dollars merely in Yonkers.

  “Ah,” I said aloud, when the salt-rimmed Margarita arrived, “Harry. Sure. You’re going to star in his Sins of Caesar’s Orgies. Right?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Not as Caesar, I’ll bet.”

  “Of course not … will you quit it?”

  “OK. What did Harry tell you about me?”

  “Oh, he told me all about you.”

  “That was foul of him.”

  “I don’t think he was serious. I think he was just trying to frighten me.”

  “Miss Brizante,” I said soberly. “Lucrezia? Well, no matter what little fibs Harry told you, I am now none of those things. I am alert, almost entirely sober, and prepared to be industrious. To prove I’ve been listening attentively, you said you need help—you think. Is there some doubt?”

  “I’m not really sure.” She lifted her drink, let her lips sort of snuggle up to the salted rim of the glass. “It’s my father. He and my mother live at Sunrise Villas. You know where that is, don’t you?”

  I nodded. It was one of those “retirement communities” for the fifty-and-over set, a regular little city with its own local government, fire department, hospitals and such, with a population of around twelve thousand citizens and more residents doddering in daily. It was out in the desert about twenty miles from Scottsdale.

  I’d never been to the place, but similar “retirement cities” had mushroomed, almost exploded, throughout the land during the past three or four years, some of them thriving and some kind of doddering, so to speak; as a result the brains in Washington, D.C., had set up an agency which would make grants to those communities most in need of federal assistance. A Congressional delegation was at the moment studying the situation in Arizona. Consequently Sunrise Villas as well as the Del Webb—also builder of my Mountain Shadows vacation retreat—development, Sun City, a thriving community out in the Youngtown-Peoria area, and a couple of other similar developments near Tucson and Flagstaff in Arizona had been prominent in the local news of late.

  “Haven’t been there, but I’ve been reading about it,” I said.

  “Well, I’ve been staying with Dad and Mom for the last week, resting up and getting in shape …” Lucrezia hesitated—as well she might, I thought—smiled very slightly, then continued, “… getting rested before starting Caesar. And Dad just isn’t himself, he’s terribly worried about something. I’m sorry I can’t be more definite—he won’t tell me what’s wrong. But I know him, and I know he’s very worried. Or frightened.”

  “You’ve no idea what’s bugging him?”

  “Nothing specific. But night before last he got a phone call, and after Dad hung up he started swearing and growling about crooks and thieves and ruffians, things like that.”

  “Crooks and thieves and ruffians, eh? I don’t suppose he mentioned any helpful names?”

  “No. I was standing in the doorway, and Dad must not have realized I was there, because when he saw me he stopped talking to himself. Just suddenly got quiet. I asked him what had got him so excited—he’s quite volatile, anyway, easily excited, like many Italians.”

  “Hmm.”

  “But he wouldn’t tell me anything at all.”

  So far, it didn’t sound dangerous to me. But, then, I had not at any time assumed Lucrezia Brizante was faced with a problem of very dangerous dimensions—except the one she always had. Even so, a mere bit of swearing and growling seemed hardly enough to send her looking for a private investigator.

  “How did you happen to find me here?” I asked her.

  “I saw a little piece in the Whatyoucallit? this morning, about your vacationing at Mountain Shadows.”

  The Arizona Republic isn’t a whatyoucallit, it is one of the finest newspapers in the country; and it had been a big piece. In fact, it had been a whole “profile” of me by award-winning Maggie Wilson, gal columnist on the paper. Even including mention that I was in Arizona recuperating from a gunshot wound and several blows on and about the head which had resulted from my attacking several crooks and thieves in Los Angeles.

  More accurately, they had attacked me, since I seldom assault bands of ruffians single-handed if I can help it. The Republic’s reporter had been kind enough to mention that, of the five dangerous thugs, only two got away from me. Unfortunately she’d included the fact that I hadn’t gotten away either, having come to in the Receiving Hospital. There was also one other passage which had not been wholly clear to me, concerning my committing mayhem upon the hoodlums, and “in typical Shell Scott fashion had everything well in hand, and was feigning unconsciousness very convincingly when two police cars arrived, barely in time to rescue the remaining criminals …”

  Slightly miffed, I said, “Is that all? You want me to investigate your father’s conversation? With himself?”

  “Dad wouldn’t tell me anything more. He refused even to discuss it with me. There is one other thing I should mention, though. A couple of nights ago, Dad called a friend of his—a Mr. Jenkins, Fred Jenkins—and he came right over. He and Dad spent hours talking together. Like … like some kind of conspirators.”

  “Could you maybe make that a little clearer?”

  “They were scowling and waving their hands in the air. You know?”

  “Well, I … Go on.”

  “They went into Dad’s den and drank wine and talked and talked and talked until way after midnight. But whenever Mom or I went in they’d stop talking. Then shoo us out. But we caught them whispering, and scowling, and mumbling.”

  “Sounds serious, all right. Who’s this Jenkins?”

  “I think he used to be an executive in a phone company, or an electronics company—some kind of engineer. Why?”

  “Beats me. I’m probing—looking for clues.”

  Actually, by listening attentively I had already come up with one. A very small clue, perhaps, but I decided to impress Lu
crezia with my keenness, anyhow. I wanted her to be sure I was the right man for this job.

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “Your father got a phone call Wednesday night. Shook him up. Crooks and thieves and ruffians! Then he phoned Jenkins after that—the same night! Significant, what? How about that?”

  She blinked slowly, impossibly long lashes swooping down and up, down and up again. But she didn’t seem very excited. Seemed to be going to sleep. “Of course,” she said.

  “Yes … of course.” I paused, wondering where I’d gone wrong, then proceeded briskly, “Well, we’re off to a fine start, what? Just in case I wrap this job up before, ah, eight P.M., how about dinner tonight, Miss Brizante? Lucrezia?”

  “No.”

  “Ah. Hum, well. Anything else you can tell me? Besides ‘No,’ I mean?”

  “No.”

  “That’s swell. Well, ah, do you want me to take the case? Whatever it is?”

  “Of course I do. Why do you think I came here to see you?”

  “Makes sense. OK. I’m on the job. Rarin’ to go.”

  “Then, shall we go, Mr. Scott?”

  “Shell?”

  “I mean, Shell. I forgot.”

  After a thick silence I said, “You—forgot.”

  She leaned forward, smiling a wise smile, and dropped a cool, soft palm on the back of my hand, her body pressing against the table’s edge. More accurately, what it appeared she did was rest her sensational bosom upon the tabletop, whereupon as though impelled by reverse gravity it began preparing to sit on my lap.

  Mollified, I said, “Well, I suppose we’d better get at it.”

  “Yes, you should talk to Dad as soon as possible.”

  “Dad?”

  “If we hurry, we can get there during the council meeting.”

  “Dad—council—ah. He’s in a council meeting? What council is this?”

  “Dad is president this year of the Sunrise Villas Community Representation Council. They meet every Friday afternoon, and Kerwin Stephens will be there this time, so it’s a very important meeting not only for Dad but for all the residents.”